The national finals of the 2nd China Virtual Reality Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, the "Yeda Cup," will kick off in Yantai, Shandong from March 27th to 29th. Focusing on the popularization of virtual reality and ideal solutions, China Electronics News conducted special interviews with the top 64 contestants nationwide. The contestants discussed the hardware standards, content elements, and auxiliary technologies of consumer-grade VR/AR products, and analyzed the fit and development trends of VR/AR with industries such as healthcare, education, manufacturing, cultural tourism, and streaming media. What bottlenecks must be overcome for virtual reality to "turn the virtual into the real"? What conditions must be met for its popularization and implementation in the consumer and industrial markets?

Popularization is just around the corner

With the gradual improvement of hardware quality, resolution, and rendering capabilities, the problems faced by VR helmets have evolved from "being able to use" to "being easy to use". How to achieve interaction with virtual objects, reduce the weight of computing modules through cloud technology, and enable long-term use have become the technical barriers for the next stage of VR helmets.

Fan Weiming, product director of Lingyu Intelligent Control, pointed out to a reporter from China Electronics News that there are still three bottlenecks in the popularization of virtual reality.

First, there are technical barriers to hardware products. Currently, PC VR and all-in-one devices address display issues, allowing users to enter a virtual world. However, existing PC/mobile-based interaction methods (such as head-controlled touch buttons and 3DOF controllers similar to TV remotes) prevent users from interacting with virtual objects, limiting VR devices to mere tools for watching 3D movies or panoramic videos.

Second, the price of hardware products. Virtual reality is a new technology product that lacks a mature supply chain system and a massive user base, resulting in high product costs and a low user experience. In addition, the industry lacks unified interface and protocol standards, making it difficult for users to get started, which invisibly increases the difficulty of product popularization.

Third, VR content is scarce and playability is low. Without content, users are reluctant to purchase the devices; and with so few users, content producers are reluctant to invest significant resources in creating high-quality content, creating a vicious cycle.

"In terms of 6DOF positioning interaction in virtual reality, it only needs to be accurate, environmentally robust, widely compatible, and easy to use, and it should occupy as little CPU computing resources as possible when in use. This can effectively reduce product costs and the difficulty of developing high-quality game content." Fan Weiming pointed out to reporters.

Huang Zhuang, founder and CEO of Shenzhen BrainCross Technology, told China Electronics News that the widespread adoption of virtual reality requires four conditions: scenarios, hardware, content, and price. Regarding scenarios, it's necessary to identify use cases with strong demand. Regarding hardware, it's necessary to leverage technologies like cloud VR to migrate computing power to the cloud to reduce hardware weight. Regarding content, VR/AR should be comparable to mobile phones, focusing on ease of use, an enhanced experience, rich content, and improved convenience. The lack of rich, high-quality, and well-made VR content is a major challenge to its widespread adoption. Regarding pricing, it's necessary to cultivate user habits for paid software and improve the retention of content creators in the VR industry.

"The weight of VR glasses' hardware and software should be controlled within 50g, because 50g is the limit of human comfort experience when wearing glasses. In this state, the glasses require very small batteries so that people can wear them for a long time. At the same time, the field of view of VR glasses must be at least 135 degrees, so as to better achieve the feeling of virtual reality." Huang Zhuang said.

On the hardware side, Huang Qinhua, Vice President of Shenzhen Skyworth New World, outlined specific targets. He told a reporter from China Electronics News that ideal VR hardware products should have a field of view exceeding 150 degrees, a single-eye screen resolution exceeding 4K, a video resolution exceeding 16K, a weight of around 100 grams, inside-out positioning, and cloud-based rendering, with the device being used solely for image display and interactive feedback, thus reducing weight and cost. Content requirements include 16K 6DoF video and VR games that can sustain long-term user engagement, ensuring user engagement.

On the technical level, Lin Qiong, CEO of Shanghai Xvisio Sensing Technology, pointed out to a reporter from China Electronics News that mature vSLAM tracking technology should meet the following key technical indicators: 6DOF output speed higher than 90fps, horizontal resolution and tracking accuracy should reach the millimeter level; low power consumption, small size, good environmental robustness, not easy to lose, and strong repositioning capability; able to complete calculations on the device side, saving data background computing and transmission costs, and at the same time having the scalability of AI and traditional CV, facilitating function customization and customized development by VR/AR manufacturers.

Regarding content production, Zhang Jinyu, founder and CEO of Beijing Xushi Technology (Xushi Technology), told a reporter from China Electronics News that with the advent of 5G, AR and VR are no longer constrained by environmental factors. Consequently, fundamental elements, data interaction, and application interfaces have become pressing challenges. First, the construction of fundamental elements. VR/AR is a 3D world. Easily created 2D elements like photos and videos have fueled the prosperity of the 2D internet world. Only when 3D models can be quickly created can AR and VR truly take off. Second, data interaction capabilities—how to create digital twins of real objects in the virtual world and enable interaction—are also a crucial source of big data for the VR/AR sector. Finally, a user-friendly, multi-intelligence interface is essential. In a 3D world, a human or humanoid image, capable of displaying expressions, movements, voice, images, text, video, models, and scenes, will be used to build a new interactive interface that will popularize VR/AR and connect everything.

On the software development front, Zhang Mingshu, COO of Guangzhou Dingxiang VR+ Park, noted that the widespread adoption of virtual reality has reached a critical juncture in device technology. In China, VR software developers are scarce, mostly operating as small workshops. VR content, especially offline experiences, should rely on high-quality multiplayer interaction as its core competitiveness. VR isn't something you enjoy alone; it truly unlocks its value through multi-person interaction and discussion.

Shenzhen Panorama Reappearance's Liu Shengfeng believes that mobile phones can serve as a breakthrough point for VR/AR content development. Because VR/AR consumers need to purchase both hardware and content, much customized content is inaccessible to the general public. By developing content based on user phones, creating entry-level killer apps, and then guiding users towards higher-quality, high-end software and hardware products, VR/AR software and hardware can quickly enter a virtuous cycle.

Regarding user experience, Xie Haizheng of Beijing Weikaiside noted that the primary goal of a VR experience is to be "painless," avoiding physical disturbances like dizziness and nausea. Furthermore, remote clients should be adaptable to a wider range of devices, with varying bandwidths and requirements (e.g., 2D, glasses-free 3D, VR, and AR) so that content can be delivered to the client through distributed software processing.

During the interview, Shenzhen Mixed Reality CTO Xu Zeming, Shenzhen Simeng Technology CEO Cao Siming and many other contestants pointed out that in the consumer market, the popularization of virtual reality requires lightweight equipment, human-computer interaction systems suitable for VR/AR, 5G popularization and other requirements, so that VR/AR equipment can be regularized, daily and systematic; in the industry market, Meifang Yunke Brand Manager Li Yuting pointed out that the popularization of virtual reality technology requires mature application scenarios, underlying technology and logical support, as well as the promotion of government departments and industry organizations, the accumulation of industry talents and mature experience, and continuous innovation and learning.

Jiang Chunxin, general manager of Shenzhen Ruilifu, pointed out to a reporter from China Electronics News that the development of virtual reality requires three stages: the first stage is AR+mobile terminal, which uses existing equipment and technologies to achieve the popular application of virtual reality; the second stage is when VR glasses are light enough to be used as regular wearable devices. This stage requires the formation of an underlying system with virtual reality as the core to lay a solid foundation for the ultimate form of virtual reality; the third stage is when biotechnology develops to a high enough level, virtual reality will be directly applied to the connection of visual nerves, becoming a part of people's daily life and a part of the human body.

Numerous business opportunities in the industry

As a new generation of platform technology and Internet portal, VR/AR has been integrated into various industries and integrated with many emerging technologies based on its characteristics of realistic reusability, scene visualization, and support for multi-person interaction.

Medical education and surgical simulation are the earliest industries where VR has been implemented. Liu Jun, founder of West Valley (Shanghai) Medical, told a reporter from China Electronics News that medical practice involves the most complex knowledge and the cost of mistakes is high. Furthermore, medicine is a highly practical science, and the accumulation of experience and improvement of diagnosis and treatment skills come from repeated operations. Therefore, virtual reality technology, based on real clinical cases, has the following outstanding advantages: first, it makes individual "tacit knowledge" explicit, standardized, and widely shared; second, it is repeatable; third, it enables doctors to train their skills and accumulate experience while fully ensuring patient safety; fourth, it is objective and standardized, which is conducive to the rapid cultivation of homogeneous professional talents; and fifth, it enables data structuring, establishing a gateway for truly intelligent healthcare.

"Currently, the application of virtual reality in the medical field focuses on helping students master basic knowledge efficiently. There is limited exploration of converting knowledge into professional skills, and many problems need to be solved. For example, technicians and professionals are on two parallel lines; VR+ medical care relies more on professional equipment, which increases user costs; knowledge is fragmented and not very systematic," said Liu Jun.

In the field of education, Lang Jun, CEO of Shenzhen Virtual Imagination Technology, pointed out that current education is mainly based on book knowledge. On the one hand, it is easy to cause a disconnect between theoretical knowledge and practical operations, reducing learning efficiency; on the other hand, due to the differences in regional environments for learning knowledge, academic research cannot be effectively carried out through real-time multi-person interaction between different locations. The lack of a discussion and sharing environment is not conducive to cross-regional exchanges in the academic industry.

"Through MR hybrid technology, in the form of multi-person interaction, we can eliminate the distance differences between regions, carry out practical operations while learning theories, and deepen the theories while carrying out practical operations, which can effectively solve the pain points of the education industry." Lang Jun said.

Xu Weixin, deputy general manager of Shanghai Letian Intelligent Technology, also pointed out that virtual reality technology will make it easier for all people to learn without geographical restrictions, and enable them to learn at any time whether on campus, at work or at home.

In the field of smart manufacturing, several competitors stated that VR/AR must be integrated with emerging technologies such as big data and the Internet of Things to meet the standards, management, and efficiency requirements of smart manufacturing. Yu Xinrong, Vice President of Xiamen Huili Weiye, told a reporter from China Electronics News that virtual reality industry applications must provide better solutions to common problems facing the industry. For example, in the field of smart manufacturing, the combination of the Internet of Things (data collection) + big data (data storage and analysis) + virtual reality (presentation and interaction) enables visual monitoring and management of the entire production process, meeting the needs of enterprises for "centralized monitoring and unified management" in smart factories, improving management efficiency while reducing management costs.

Chen Liang, director of strategic partnerships at Liangliang Vision, told China Electronics News that the application of augmented reality is still in its early stages. As related technologies mature, costs continue to decrease, and they integrate with 3D printing, digital twins, the Industrial Internet of Things, predictive analytics, and machine vision, augmented reality will bring more changes to the manufacturing industry.

Smart manufacturing's demand for VR/AR has also spurred the development of VR graphics engines that support large-scale industrial manufacturing simulation and mechanical manufacturing. Zhao Jing, CMO of Shiyi Technology, told China Electronics News that ideal underlying VR technology should serve design, R&D, and production demonstration, rather than simply serving exhibition purposes.

"(VR underlying technology) should support users to quickly obtain three-dimensional data in the real world, and be able to build their three-dimensional models, constitute models corresponding to virtual scenes, and perform logical grouping. Human-computer interaction is completed through control modules and sensor modules. Users control parameter input to drive virtual objects. Sensors transmit information for analysis and feedback to users, mapping it into a complete digital twin, which in turn becomes a way to improve productivity." Zhao Jing said.

VR/AR technologies, with their low entry barriers and ease of use, are already being integrated into everyday life. Jia Huizhong, founder of Xuanshi Technology, noted that VR can be used as a supplementary feature at tourist attractions, such as by installing a mobile payment-enabled VR viewing platform similar to a coin-operated telescope. While the experience fee is significantly lower than the entrance fee, the sheer volume of visitors suggests that even with 50 visitors a day, the investment can be recovered within three months.

Lei Qiang, CEO of Chuangqu Interactive, also pointed out that ideal software and hardware must be close to real life and integrated into the lives of the general public to be considered effective. For example, using AR to create a smart toothbrush can help children learn and master the basic skill of brushing their teeth, making technology more practical.

The 2nd China Virtual Reality Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition "Yeda Cup" National Finals and the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development Conference are guided by the China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition Organizing Committee Office, hosted by the Shandong Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, the Yantai Municipal People's Government, the China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute, and the Virtual Reality Industry Alliance, and co-organized by the Yantai Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee, China Electronics News Agency, Guoke Innovation and Entrepreneurship Investment Co., Ltd., Shaanxi Modern Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Foundation, and Yantai Innovation and Entrepreneurship Investment Co., Ltd. Representatives from nearly 20 investment institutions, including Guoxin Innovation Investment Management (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Minmetals Innovation Investment Co., Ltd., CICC Haihe Industrial Development Fund, HTC Vive, Shenzhen Capital Group Co., Ltd., and Aerospace Science and Industry Investment Fund Management (Beijing) Co., Ltd., will serve as judges for the competition.

*All names and brands mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Original article by Zhang Xinyi. Reprinted from China Electronics News. Click here to view the original article.

Xvisio Technology (Xvisio Technology) is a computer vision company engaged in the development of underlying technologies for spatial perception and cognition (vSLAM+AI). It focuses on providing high-speed (100fps) end-to-end vSLAM solutions for AR/VR/MR, robotics, AGV and other fields, including high-precision position tracking, navigation, obstacle avoidance and object recognition.

Founded in Silicon Valley in 2016, Xvisio Technology secured angel investment in 2017 from China Science and Technology Star Ventures and is headquartered in Shanghai. The company currently has subsidiaries in the US and Europe. The company's founding team, comprised of core management personnel from leading industry companies, has a long history of entrepreneurial experience, boasts 10 R&D PhDs, and boasts over 50 man-years of industry-leading research achievements. Xvisio Technology is an Intel Movidius licensee and solution partner.